


born from wishes

by ofinkandeyesbeheld



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Live Fic, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 22:23:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20366077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofinkandeyesbeheld/pseuds/ofinkandeyesbeheld
Summary: "We are children born from wishes, but we would die from curses."





	born from wishes

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: You were a baby created by a wish, and you learn the cost of that when you hear about one of your friends’ cousins touching seawater and dying on contact. Children like you are fatally vulnerable to something, whether it’s snow, silver, too much distance from your home or even kisses. You don’t know what your weakness is yet. How will you find out what it is and avoid it?  
(prompt from @writing-prompt-s on tumblr!)
> 
> This is a live fic, originally written live (yes, LIVE) in a discord server of close friends. Members submitted prompts and this was the prompt that won, and I had an hour to pull all my brain cells together to write this fic. 
> 
> This fic has minimal edits since its debut in the discord server--mainly grammatical. 
> 
> Please enjoy! To join future live fics: https://discord.gg/xPzGM55 (new server that I just made 8/23/2019)

The voices reverberate around the lockers, and each time, it's a reminder of something terribly wrong, terribly secret, and something that nobody else could really quite understand...except those that _knew_.

_"Did you hear how Sarya died? She was at the beach—"_

_"I heard that as soon as the waves brushed against her ankles, she collapsed—"_

_"I heard that she was seen clutching her chest, trying to breathe, and by the time they got to her, she was already gone—"_

_"The doctors say it was an allergic reaction, something rare in the seawater—"_

_"But don't you think it's suspicious? She died within a few minutes, and even when the lifeguards came, it was already too late—"_

I’m facing my locker— it echoes too much, everyones' words, and with every passing second, my stomach is twisting, turning, relentlessly, every time they mention Sarya's name.

We shared something that no one else knew, or would ever understand. We were the perfect children, the fairy children, the miracle children—there were tales of us across cultures, across countries—

You see,

We were children born from wishes,

But we would die from curses.

There weren't many of us, but we knew the moment we saw each other. Sarya was the only one that I knew that was...._like me_.

I knew the exact moment that Sarya...left this world. It was 2:55PM—I had been in the studio, painting, when the blue paint spilled, and the only thing I could hear "she wished to be _free_."

Minutes later, I'd get texts from my friend, hysterical, words that didn't make sense, just pure, sheer desperation.

I called her, listened through her tears, her sobs.

"Sarya....she's in a better place," I hesitated.

There was silence on the other end of the line, the silence like a roaring wave, deafening, powerful, that said all too much all on its own.

"I never said her name."

And then the _beep_, as the line went dead.

The truth, is there's very little that I know, and yet I know all too much. That we are born from wishes. Sarya and I — we knew this from the beginning.

It's difficult to explain, let alone understand. We are children born from desires. These sort of tales pop up on the news more often than you think, but for some reason, I never had the same reaction that I did than when I realized Sarya's....ending. A boy who perished under the sun, a girl who died after receiving a silver filling— but I knew the truth. These were stories built of lies.

And now I knew, more so than ever, that I too was cursed—but with _what?_

What was my fate? How was I cursed to die? A kiss on the cheek? Distance too far from home?

"Mari, you haven't been talking much lately" and my thoughts are broken, derailing, crashing into the ocean below the bridge.

"Mari? Is it because of....?"

I nod.

"Oh, honey....." and my mother embraces me.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. _I'm so sorry._"

I sit, stone-faced. I cried out my sadness days ago. What weighs me now is what Sarya's death _meant._

Wishes, revealed, after fate is set in motion?

I ask to be excused, to go into the studio. A place where I can be alone, where I can be me, where I can think.

There's a tightness in my chest that won't go away. I hadn't thought that Sarya would have left so soon, that these curses were real. _I was going to die someday, and it would be an accident made fateful._

Sarya had told me long ago that it was her mother that had made her wish—she was sure of it.

_"How could you be so sure?"_

_"It's hard to say, but once, she slipped up. My mom, she called me her little bird, but that night....she said she was thankful, that her dreams had come true. That she had been able to escape her tiny village, come to another country, and live another life."_

_"I'm sure that it was her."_

What a sick irony. That her mother—Sarya's mother had dreamed to escape, but her daughter was confined to stay within one country.

_Had Sarya's mother known?_

Whenever Sarya tried to travel, it was disaster after another, coincidences that were too certain—flights cancelled, failure to pass a security check.

Sarya's mother was granted freedom, but it was Sarya who was now in chains.

It was a deal with the devil — you gain a wish, but its cost is far more—a child's fate, tied up in red strings, with one wrapped and pressed against their dainty necks. _One wrong move, and it all crashes down._

I thought back to my own mother's life, before and after me.

I didn't have a father—or rather, I did, but he could hardly have even been called a shadow.

What did my mother wish for?

Even my childhood was unremarkable — mom was a lawyer, made more money than even most two parent households.

And though I said I didn't have a father, I did have an older brother. Not half-brother, but older brother. Older by three years, he was a football player.

Mom's life was also unremarkable. A typical nuclear family— she was successful before she had ever had me, or even my brother. My father simply was a coward, or at least, that's what mom always said. A man that never had the guts to face what he had.

There were no clues that suggested what my mother had wished for — anything that made her had me.

I looked down— absent mindedly, I had painted a scenery of the ocean, of the sun, of Icarus — the boy who made wings of feathers and wax and flew too close to the sun. Was this how Daedalus felt, losing his son? Making it this far, only to lose his son to something as arbitrary as a simple mistake?

Sarya was gone. Sarya has been....gone. It's been two weeks now. The voices in school have quieted down.

But I had met my match, with my own mortality. I didn't want to die—I wanted to live. I wanted to live, on my own terms, not some contract that was written in blood.

What had my mother wished for, so desperately, that I was born into this world?

With each passing day, I'm more and more certain that it was my mother. There's a sullen silence between us—she knows that I know the truth. I've always known. "Always say your wishes out loud—" "Don't throw your coins into the fountains—it's a waste of your money." "Take out the candles and drop them into this cup of water—"

I couldn't make sense of it at all. Even with Sarya, the clues were so obvious.

Even Sarya had understood. Just stay in the country. Be happy and live there. But she—nor I—had ever figured out that it was seawater that would send her to the death bed.

It's been three weeks now. Each passing day, I grow more afraid. What if I do something different today, and that's how I die?

I always used the electric sharpener — if I used a manual one, would that be my death? What if I got a higher grade on my math test than usual?

Even walking home, I became inconsolable, my anxieties growing by the moment. I was Icarus, but though I knew the dangers of the sun, I knew not where it was.

Each day, my mother notices my feelings. How it feels dark in the house, how silent it has grown. I hardly ever say anything during dinner, just go to the studio and paint, and paint, and paint. Each time, the ocean comes back, threatens me with tears.

One day, I lose it completely. A bucket of red paint, and I scrawl across the canvas:

** _I WANT TO LIVE_ **

"Be careful of what you wish for," I hear a voice echo.

It has a sickening familiarity, like I've always known who it was.

"How much are you willing to pay?"

I spin, but there's no one in the room with me.

"I said, how much are you willing to pay?"

"I'm. Not. Playing. Your. Sick. Game!!"

"All wishes have a cost." It's stoic, matter-of-fact, and cold.

"Do you even care about what happens to people like me?"

"A contract is a contract. It's business."

"I'm not signing."

"Then you know how this will end. Even if you don't know when."

I can hear his voice trailing off, like he's walking out.

"Wait."

I can hear the pause.

"Well?"

"I'll pay."

"Delightful. What will you pay with?"

"My own life."

There's a silence. It's deafening, like the canvases of the different ocean waves behind me.

"No—"

"You're the devil, aren't you? Your currency is souls, isn't it? I'm paying with my own life."

"But your wish is to _live_—"

"That's right."

"I can't—"

"You will. You can, and you will. Because you see, I've finally figured it out. 15 years ago, my mother made a deal with you. She wished for something, and after it was completed, I was born. I was born on April 4th, 2004."

"I'm not allowed to make wishes, lest you'd appear, and offer me the same deal that you offered my mother. You see, my mother sold my soul to you in order to make her final wish come true: for our family to be free of this curse. We are children born from wishes, but die from curses."

"I'm not allowed to make wishes, or I'll die. But I'm ready to make a contract with you, wishing _to live_, selling my soul to you."

_"It's your move now, devil."_

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this short story! Join my live fic server if you would like to vote on prompts, have interactive live fics, or just enjoy live writing. 
> 
> If you would like to join future live fics: https://discord.gg/xPzGM55 
> 
> Total writing time: ~1 hour and 20 minutes.


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